Food Rules #27 Eat Animals that have Themselves Eaten Well

Cows eating concrete? Fish eating other fish? If it doesn't sound right, it probably isn't. Pollan talks about how industrially-raised animals are being fed high-energy diets to cheaply fatten them up. The only problem is, cows have evolved to eat grass, and when they are fed corn and other things, they develop health issues that cause them to be treated by antibiotics. We eat this beef and our bodies build up a resistance to antibiotics. Deadly strains of ecoli and other disease may also start to run rampant. The meat is then doused with ammonia to kill the strains, or even worse, people die from ecoli contamination. Corn diets make our farm animals fat. So much of our processed food is either fed a diet of genetically-modified corn or is chock full of HFCS. We eat everything the animal has eaten, and it's not always good for us.

Pastured animals taste different and I think, better. Yes, they are more expensive, but that's because they are eating the plants and grass from their surroundings and take longer to mature (rather than getting fattened up unnaturally in 1/3 or 2/3 the amount of time). The land used for grazing the animals needs to also be rotated to give the plantlife a chance to regrow. Slow food indeed.